Some of the problems of maintaining a proper level of ballast between the ties of railroad tracks and between adjacent tracks and the removal of accumulated foreign debris from the spaces between the rails of individual tracks and between adjacent tracks, particularly in railroad yards, have been recognized in the past.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,748,720 to Kling discloses a large, expensive, apparatus which is designed for removing such materials from these areas. However, the apparatus of Kling was so designed and constructed that it has that use alone and has to be constructed with the track-cleaning object in mind. This makes the machine very expensive to build in the first place. In addition, the machine is designed on a rigid frame with wheels which span a single railroad track and with scraping means which are designed to ride both rails of a track and between the rails of the track, but laterally only to the ends of the ties of that particular track. The Kling machine does not have means for accumulation of the removed debris in the machine itself, and, therefore, an auxiliary vehicle into which the debris is discharged by the Kling machine must be utilized for delivery of the debris to a dumping location.
As another example, a much simpler apparatus is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,305,952 to Dressler. This machine consists of a simple front-loader with an auxiliary scoop which cleans material from between the rails of a track and dumps it into a hopper carried on the front of the loader.
Because of the rigid frame of the Kling machine, crossing a plurality of railroad tracks, as in a yard, presents a problem due to the "racking" of the apparatus and the likelihood that where the tracks lie at different ground levels, the machine easily could get "hung up," unless extreme care were taken to cross the tracks at right angles.
It is the principal object of the instant invention to provide a machine for cleaning debris from railway roadbeds, including not only the spaces between the rails of a single track, but also the spaces between adjacent tracks.
It is yet another object of the instant invention to provide a machine for cleaning debris from railway tracks which has means for storing a large volume of removed debris in the apparatus so that, from time to time, the debris can be delivered to a dumping location by the same machine. As a result, only one operator is necessary, both for the cleaning operation and for the delivery and dumping operation.
And yet another object of the instant invention is to provide a railway track cleaner which quickly can be moved away from the track it is cleaning in the event that railroad traffic is approaching on that track.
Yet another object of the instant invention is to provide a railway track cleaner which readily can be utilized not only to clear the spaces between the rails of a single track, but also the spaces between adjacent tracks, and which has the ability to simultaneously re-deposit the cleared debris between the ties of a track or in the space between tracks where the level of the ballast is below the tops of the track ties.
And it is yet another object of the instant invention to provide a track cleaning adapter which readily can be mounted upon a standard articulated scraper-loader, preferably of the type having a two-wheel tractor and a two-wheel scraper-loader connected thereto.